January 23, 2007

Wikiseek: a replacement for ODP?

The Open Directory Project was one of the first volunteer-built directories of the best-of-the-web sites, similar to the original iteration of Yahoo, but with categories created and maintained by volunteers. Google and other SEs have used ODP for their "Directory" search. Unfortunately, ODP is running out of steam, energy, volunteers and creativity. It is a quart of milk about 2 weeks past its sell-by date.

But I just discovered Wikiseek and I'm about ready to swoon in excitement. It's a search engine, yeah, but it only indexes pages within Wikipediaand the sites that are linked to from Wikipedia articles.

For years, I've been recommending subject directories as good starting points for research, because they usually include the best sites rather than whatever floats to the top of search engine results. (For example, the heinous martinlutherking.org site used to show up at the top of search results for Dr. King.) And the sites that are linked to within Wikipedia articles are almost by definition reputable and reliable, thanks to the peer-editing of the wiki. So Wikiseek is a way to just search the pages that - for one reason or another - Wikipedia editors believe are important.

I gave Wikiseek a try and I'm liking it. Among its cool features is the ability to limit the results to just those sites linked-to from articles within a specific Wikipedia category. Interestingly, the list of categories are tag-cloud-ish -- the links to the largest categories are in larger font than the smaller categories. A search for avian flu, for example, can be limited to sites from the "Animal Diseases" category (great big font), Epidemiology, Viruses or Zoonoses (tiny font). (And no, I didn't know what zoonoses are either.)

It's still beta, so it feels pretty bare bones right now. But it's sure worth watching.

I share your enthusiasm for Wikiseek. (See http://blog.xodp.org/2007/01/promise-of-wikiseek.html .) However, I am more than a little concerned that there is a movement afoot at Wikipedia to replace external links in Wikipedia articles with links to ODP categories. (See http://blog.xodp.org/2007/02/linking-wikipedia-articles-to-odpdmoz.html .)